Chunks of the Gardiner expressway are crumbling. Condo glass is falling from above. Mayor Rob Ford is grasping to stay at the top. The things we know as solid are breaking. It's like the lines from William Butler Yeats' devastating poem, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, are coming true in Toronto: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world …”

What's the citizen who just wants it all to stop to do? Now might be a good time to visit some solid Toronto places, to reassure yourself the city will endure, as it always has. Places that make us feel, as the old British expression goes, “safe as houses.” In this real estate-mad city, that's got to mean something.

Sometimes a walk in the woods is soothing. In Toronto we can do that in the ravines, but unlike true wilderness, here we can see the underbelly of great civic works of engineering: our many bridges. Reassure yourself under the massive steel spans that hold up St. Clair Ave. E., just east of Yonge St. as the road crosses the Vale of Avoca ravine. In this cathedral space over Yellow Creek, the anchoring abutments that appear to go deep into the earth are unphased by what goes on at City Hall.

We build things to last sometimes. This bridge was opened in 1926, and there's many like it around Toronto; well-known spans such as the Prince Edward Viaduct that connects Bloor St. and the Danforth, or the bridge over the West Don River, where four magnificent spans of Highway 401 cross the Don Valley Golf Course. Like most of our bridges, they are best appreciated from below.

Back up at street level, people either love Robarts Library at the University of Toronto or dislike it with a hate that should be reserved only for war criminals. Yet inside it's like being in a human-made mountain: it keeps the books safe. Wandering through isn't unlike hiking a Rocky Mountain trail: there are big chunks of rock (concrete) and lots of wood (not trees but smooth, sculpted railings and other accents). Like mountains, buildings such as Robarts feel as though they've been here for an eternity and will endure anything.

Like the library, many civic projects built from the 1960s to the 1980s were variations on what's known as the Brutalist style of architecture. It's not old enough to be universally loved the way Victorian architecture is now, which itself fell out of fashion in the decades after World War II. There are some bad examples, like any style, but if you want to feel secure, concrete is your best friend. Buildings across Toronto, like City Hall itself, the Ontario Science Centre, and much of U of T's Scarborough campus lend a solid, calming feel from inside.

The Maple Leaf Gardens shell is another wonder of stability. The same walls that held in Duran Duran and Beatles concerts — and even inexplicable things like Leaf Stanley Cup wins — now hold another, smaller Ryerson arena, a Loblaws supermarket and other shops. The Great Depression, Hurricane Hazel and Harold Ballard could not destroy it, and it rolled with the changes. It lasted, as our city will, with all of us in it. Safe as houses.

Shawn Micallef writes every Friday about life in the GTA. Wander the streets with him on Twitter @shawnmicallef.

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